


Broken Crown

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Humor, I Don't Even Know, I mean it's dark, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, School Shootings, Steve Has Issues, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, This sounds so much darker than it is, Tony Has Issues, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark has PTSD, at appropriate times, but not all dark, i've had floating in my head for like 2 years, just a lot of feels, so I finally wrote it out, this is just some random idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-19 05:30:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11306667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Tony has lived a charmed life, sure, and sure that was kind of built on murder given the whole weapons production thing but someone was going to make weapons even if it wasn’t him. He didn’t spend too much time thinking about it until he was looking down the barrel of one of his own guns wondering if this was how everyone else who’s been killed by his weapons felt.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for some obvious things found in previous tags- generally school shootings and all that comes with it. Things are kept quite vague in the first chapter and to be honest I don't go into detail ever really- in my opinion there's no need to. Less is more with this kind of thing but there is violence in here, even if it doesn't get a lot of description so be prepared (I'll also warn on those chapters specifically). 
> 
> That said I hope you like it (considering the dark subject).

Tony has lived a charmed life, sure, and sure that was kind of built on murder given the whole weapons production thing but someone was going to make weapons even if it wasn’t him. He didn’t spend too much time thinking about it until he was looking down the barrel of one of his own guns wondering if this was how everyone _else_ who’s been killed by his weapons felt.

*

Steve has always loved photography even if the chemicals in the dark room made his head swim and his lungs always burned after the class. He knew he shouldn’t be in there with his asthma and all of that but he did it anyways because he already knew he was going to live a short life with all his health issues and no way to pay his hospital bills. His mom did her best but on her minimum wage jobs she couldn’t really afford much more than the rent. Still, he loved art and he’s always had an eye for pictures so here he was in the dark room with his pictures developing them in the baths.

It doesn’t surprise him whatsoever when the door opens and a bunch of light flows in because the other classmate of his that spent a bunch of time in here was a selfish ass that had no appreciation for photography at all. “Hey Steve, what’re you developing over there?” Tony Stark asks in that annoyingly cocky tone of his.

“Pictures, not that you have any appreciation for them,” he snaps and moves one of his pictures to the second bath once it was developed enough.

“Sure I do,” Tony says. He wanders up to look at the pictures Steve had drying on the twine string that hung over the baths. “That one looks nice,” he says, pointing to a picture of Rhodey. It doesn’t surprise Steve that he’d zero in on a picture of his best friend given that they were usually glued to each other’s hip, plus it actually was a nice picture. Rhodey was photogenic and the way the sunlight hit his dark skin looked nice, especially in the picture Steve had taken of him laughing.

“Can you tell me anything about the composition of the picture?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at Tony.

He smirks when Tony looks confused, obviously not having paid attention in any of their classes not that he needed to. This was a bird course for him and Steve had a hunch he’d get a fantastic grade for doing dick all. Money bought a lot of things, especially in a school like this one. Usually poor people didn’t get to go to fancy schools like this one but Steve has always been smarter than average. Smart enough to earn a full ride scholarship not that he was going to use the fancy school as much of a reference when he wanted to do a degree in fine arts. People liked to tell their kids that they could do whatever they wanted and yet people were just as quick to tell Steve he was throwing his life away on some ‘useless’ degree because they didn’t think art contributed to the economy. He wanted to tell them that they best give up their house, clothes, furniture, and everything else that took art and design to come to life but people would scoff at that too.

“Um. No, no I can’t but it isn’t like anyone _actually_ takes this class seriously,” Tony says flippantly. Case and point. Stark thought he was hot shit because he built weapons but Steve didn’t have much of an appreciation for the talent. Stark was brilliant, so much so that he really shouldn’t be in high school but he couldn’t seem to pass an English class for the life of him. Steve briefly tutored him last semester in the subject and ended up telling Tony he was stupid and a lost cause. He had felt awful about it later but then Tony took a bizarre interest in him and he went back to hating him again.

“ _I_ take this class seriously. Just because everyone can take a picture doesn’t mean everyone is _good_ at it.” He knew how people viewed the arts. Sure, most everyone could string a sentence together but it didn’t mean they could tell a story. Most people could fling paint at a canvas but most people missed the point behind the art so it meant nothing. And of course people treated drawing as some kind of easy talent when in reality it took hours of painstaking effort only for some jackass to look at it for five seconds and tell you that you’re talent was worthless. Passion didn’t seem to matter because apparently passion didn’t exist in this economy.

“I seem to do okay,” Tony says. He thinks he’s being smart but Tony had a good eye and it pissed Steve off that he had a natural affinity for the arts. He was damn good at drawing too, Steve has seen his designs, but he didn’t view that as a talent.

“You’d do okay even if you were genuinely shit at the subject,” Steve points out, moving his picture to the third and final bath.

Tony frowns, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means money buys you whatever you want, talent included.” It might be blunt but it was true. Tony might be brilliant but he skated by on a lot of things in life just because he had the money to.

“Uh, excuse you I’m a genius you know,” Tony says. He’s offended by the suggestion and of course he is, weren’t all rich kids offended when poor people told them they had the money and power to do whatever they wanted no matter how mediocre they were.

“Never said you weren’t, but we both know you’ll get a great grade in this class even if you don’t deserve it. And I’ve seen the things you can do- be honest, do you really believe people would believe you when you told them about the things you can build without the money to actually _fund_ your projects? The answer is no because they barely believe you with the actual evidence sitting right in front of them.” It didn’t help that Tony’s designs were incredibly advanced. He’s heard rumors that Tony has managed to build a semi-autonomous AI as well but as of now that was all talk.

“Yeah? Well if money can buy me grades how come I _still_ haven’t passed my English class, hmm?” Tony says defiantly.

Unfortunately for him Steve anticipated this argument. “Because your father wants to keep you distracted with something else long enough that people don’t look too hard into your designs being better than his. It’s a ploy to keep you from gaining too much power in his company and it doesn’t help that people hands down like you better. All around you’re good for business and he’s not prepared to give up his power. The thing with money is that when someone has more than you they get power over you and your father has more money than you,” Steve says. It was a fact whether or not Tony wanted to admit it but judging from the look on his face something he said hit close to home.

Surprisingly Tony leaves him be then and he goes to sit on the table across the room to toy around on his fucking phone. Steve doesn’t bother to tell him that the light from the damn thing could mess with his pictures because they were already covered in the event that Tony decided to be an ass. Which was always. He hangs up the first photo he sent through the baths and starts on another. This one was a picture of the school and it had been one he was forced to take. He had no interest in the school really; he’d only ever applied here because some rich asshole told him he’d never get in. Boy was he surprised to find Steve in his class a few months later.

Sadly, though, he was easily the best art student this school had and as a result he was in charge of basically anything art related. The pictures were taken for the yearbook but the original photos were to be distributed around the school first for some stupid reason. It did look good on uni applications though and given the schools he was applying to he needed the extra effort. Steve has never been known to do things small so he was applying to pretty prestigious schools. Having a lot of extra curricular activities was a good thing and his grades were excellent across the board but he wanted to make sure he had what he needed to get in. So he did some stuff for the year book too.

He slowly works his way through the pictures, content to ignore Tony while he did the same though it was unusual for him to be so silent. Usually he blabbered on about shit Steve didn’t care about in an attempt to get Steve to like him. This had come about in response to Steve insulting his intelligence of all things and now Tony had a bug up his ass about him for some reason. Rhodey and Pepper often gave him pitying looks and honestly he felt the same way. He had no interest in Tony and the only reason Tony was even in this class was because Steve was. It wasn’t getting him anywhere though because he was none of what Steve wanted in a friend or a romantic interest given that Tony has made his intentions clear.

“Shit, what the hell?” Tony mumbles and Steve sees the shadows from the phone shift like he was shaking it or something. “Hey, do you have cell service?” he asks after a few moments.

Steve was tempted to ignore him but given his health issues cell service was actually kind of important to him so he checks. Secretly he hopes Tony’s phone design crapped out on him or something because that would be funny. When he takes out his phone though he also has no service. “No, apparently not,” he says. He was about to leave the room to see if he had better service in the hallway but Tony is snatching his phone out of his hands.

“Eww, you own Hammer tech? Disgusting,” he says with meaning, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

“Well Stark tech is expensive and I’m poor,” he snaps, snatching his phone back.

“Had I known you were carrying around that outdated piece of shit I would have given you a phone for free. I have a prototype I’m testing anyways and I need a guinea pig.” The way Tony says it is so weird that Steve, for a moment, genuinely believes Tony would actually let him test a prototype for him. He dismisses it though because this was _Tony Stark_ , why would he do that? The guy was rather known for being a self-obsessed asshole.

“Sure you would have. I’m going to check to see if there’s service in the hallway,” he tells him and leaves before Tony can argue. There isn’t service out there too and he frowns, walking further down the hallway with no results.

“Uh, you left a picture in that developing bath,” Tony calls out the door and he swears. He runs back into the room only to find the picture ruined and he sighs. He pulls the picture out with tongs and throws it out angrily. “Sorry,” Tony says and he almost sounds like he means it.

“Whatever,” Steve mumbles. He drops another picture into the bath and shimmies it a little while the color bleeds into the photo.

“It wasn’t that good anyways,” Tony says and Steve glares at him. He actually winces though Steve had to agree. It wasn’t that good, most of these weren’t, because his heart wasn’t in it. “Sorry,” Tony says again. Steve goes back to ignoring him while Tony tries to figure out the cell service problem. He moves his photo to the next bath while Tony starts swearing again and he rolls his eyes.

“Is service that important to you, Stark?” he asks.

“Yeah, Rhodey was going to get me Chipotle on his spare!” Tony sounds distressed and honestly Steve couldn’t blame him there. He also had a fondness for Chipotle thanks to a drunken adventure with Bucky a few years back that his mom still didn’t know about thankfully.

“Tough luck,” is what he says instead of his actual feelings. Stark glares at him but he doesn’t get to say much before the first shot goes off.

*

Bucky is doing his best to stay away awake in math class and doing a piss poor job of it because Natasha flicks him. “Jesus Christ Barnes, do I have to blow you to keep you awake?” she asks. He can’t tell if she’s annoyed or joking but that’s the norm for Nat.

“Probably not but I’ll take it anyways,” he tells her, grinning. She rolls her eyes at him and he goes back to trying to keep his attention on the board. Fuck, he didn’t even know what the hell was going on up there. After a few minutes of trying to play catch up he decides algebra was the Devil’s piss and he stops paying attention again. He’s almost asleep when Natasha flicks him again. This time he jerks up right, rattling his desk and earning the scorn of the short, fat man who taught the class. Bucky cared so little about this class that he didn’t actually remember what the hell this guy’s name was.

“Do you have something to add, Mr. Barnes?” he asks, bushy mustache twitching. He probably thought he had cowed Bucky into submission but he just snorts.

“Yeah, fuck this shit I’m out,” he says. He grabs his book, his binder, and his backpack and walks out while the students laugh and ‘ohhhh’ behind him. He turns and grins at them all as he goes.

It doesn’t take long to find Clint smoking up in the quad, which was probably against all sorts of rules but who needed rules when he was dating the guy who enforced them? Coulson wouldn’t bust them even if he would give them several disapproving looks in that weird old man way. The fact that Coulson looked like a middle-aged dude despite being seventeen didn’t help things any. Still though, the teachers mostly relied on Coulson to give the students shit because he was terrifying when you didn’t listen. “Barnes, hey, don’t you have math?” Clint asks as Bucky walks up.

“I did but I left in the middle because math is gross and probably fake,” he says.

Clint snorts, “here, here. Want a hit?” he asks, extending his joint. Always a sharer Clint was and Bucky was happy to indulge even if Nat would bust his balls for it later. Of all people he didn’t expect her to be anti drugs but she wasn’t very fond of them at all.

They’re chatting back and forth about dropping out of school to go live under a bridge when Coulson busts them and it’s a testament to how much they knew he’d bend the rules for them that they didn’t immediately throw the joint somewhere. “You two can’t smoke legally let alone on school property! At least hang out by the ashtrays,” he scolds, shooing them back.

“Sure thing, baby. Want some?” Clint asks just because he knows that Coulson will give him an irate ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ look. There was a reason Bucky loved Clint so much and it was because he’s an asshole. It helped that Coulson absolutely delivered on that ‘are you fucking kidding me’ look.

“No I do not. Now get over there by those ashtrays,” he tells them and he goes back inside.

Some other kids were out there too staring at Clint in shock because Coulson had a reputation around here. “Fuck, who’s dick do I have to suck to get him to let _me_ off like that?” some grade nine asks.

“His, but he has standards so I doubt he’ll let you anywhere near him,” Clint says. Never mind that Clint was a totally burnout with a past who probably also failed Coulson’s standards miserably. How they clicked Bucky had no idea but they made each other happy and that was all that mattered to him really. Coulson’s face whenever he saw Clint’s bad Charmander tattoo that he did himself on his left forearm was really all Bucky needed out of their relationship. Coulson reacted similarly to all Clint’s tattoos but that was because he wasn’t fond of them or at least that’s what Bucky guessed.

“Think he’d be up for a threesome with Nat?” Bucky asks, laughing at the hilariously offended look on Clint’s face. “Shit man, relax. I have no interest in Phil Coulson and I highly doubt he has an interest in me.” Steve maybe but him? Nah, Coulson really did have standards and they really were pretty high. Clint was just an exception.

“Hey man, how the hell _did_ you end up taming Natasha Romanov?” the grade nine asks with a smirk on his face.

Clint and Bucky exchange a look before they burst out laughing. “ _Tame_ Natasha Romanov? Please buddy, she can’t be tamed and that’s what I like about her,” Bucky says. She’s terrifying but once you got past the fact that she just might threaten to drown you in Russian vodka if you looked at her funny she was actually pretty awesome. Bucky got the feeling that she made herself a scary reputation to make up for her being so attractive. People liked to act like she owed them something because they found her attractive so she made sure they didn’t want to be near her. Once all that was out of the way she was meme trash and Bucky could appreciate memes if he got to appreciate Natasha.

“Your funeral,” the kid mumbles and he turns away.

“You know I figured she’d end up with Coulson,” Clint says.

“I figured she’d end up with _you_.” Clint was the only once she liked before Bucky managed to weasel his way into her good graces and she took to Steve immediately. From there she blended into their gang pretty well.

Clint snorts, “fuck nah, she’s like my sister. That’s just _weird_. I thought you’d end up with Steve though.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose hard, “gross. Speaking of sibling-like love. I’ve seen the guy shit a bathroom half to death thanks to his colitis. There’s no way you could think of him in a sexy way after smelling that stench,” Bucky says honestly. Plus Steve has always been more like the brother he never had. They’ve known each other their whole lives, there was just no way you could date someone after all that. Besides, after all that attempting to set Steve up with someone he figured Clint would know he wasn’t interested. He wasn’t even sure if he was interested in guys at all though he supposed he wasn’t _uninterested_. He didn’t know what the hell was going on and he was with Nat so it didn’t matter anyways.

He and Clint continue joking back and forth, occasionally taking the piss out of some annoying ninth grader who thought they were cool for smoking. Bucky thinks he gets along with Clint because they had the same ambitions, or rather the same lack of them. They both got pressure from their friends to do better- both Steve and Coulson had high standards for them- but neither really felt like actually doing better. Neither one of them would admit it to anyone but the other but they just didn’t have the energy to give a shit about anything. Half the time Bucky was numb to the world around him and Clint was the only person he’s met that understood that. Steve probably guessed but he was like a little cheerleader in Bucky’s court and Coulson tried to do the same for Clint but they’d both rather sleep for the next two centuries.

They’re about to just ditch school altogether when they get the news. Some idiot from their grade- Rumlow Bucky thinks his name is- is talking about some shooting. “The hell are you talking about?” Clint asks, leaning around Bucky to talk to him. Bucky turns towards Rumlow too because he hadn’t heard anything about a shooting and he was in the neighborhood that kind of thing happened in so that was weird.

“Some shooting at some rich kid school,” he says, shaking his head. Clint and Bucky exchange a look, probably thinking the same thing.

“ _Which_ rich kid school?” Clint asks slowly.

Bucky swore it took years for Rumlow to answer but it was probably only seconds and after he says the name of Steve’s school Bucky blinks a couple times before his eyes roll back in his head and he faints.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some minor violence mostly.

Steve probably wasn’t very good at danger and he never has been. So when he hears the first gun shot his first instinct was to go to the door to see what the fuck that was about. Tony yanks him back though; face uncharacteristically serious as he looks in the general direction of the shot. If Steve had to guess it came from across the school. “Would you let me go, I want to see what’s going on,” he says. Some idiot probably got into the props again; like that time someone took the canon and then made it into a _real_ canon for a history project. It would have been a lot cooler if it wasn’t for the drama kids accidentally firing it during rehearsal. No damage was done but Steve about shit himself and reamed out the grade tens for thinking it was a good idea to light the fucking thing when they heard it had been uh… _renovated_. They thought their friend was kidding around though and that was how Yorick the skull met his untimely death by smashing into the gym wall. If someone messed with the prop guns Steve was going to shoot them himself.

Tony looks at him like he’s particularly stupid, “uh, if you want to get shot be my guest.”

He rolls his eyes, “I’m not going to get shot, dumbass. Someone is obviously playing a bad prank.” Things like this didn’t happen in the kind of neighborhood this school was in.

“I know my guns Steve, that was a real shot and from a shitty gun too. Hammer tech I’d guess, something older but I can’t place a make on it. Probably because I’d have standards high enough to avoid using one. They jam constantly.” Steve can see the gears whirring in Tony’s head and he frowns, wondering if he was right. If he was he’d be freaking out, right? It seemed reasonable to assume Tony would be freaking out if this were a school shooting. Except Tony has spent his entire life around guns, why would he be afraid of them? He managed to figure out who made the damn gun and gave it a general age range from just hearing a shot; Steve figured he probably didn’t think to be uncomfortable.

“Why isn’t the emergency system going off?” Steve asks after a few more moments of tense silence. Tony’s eyebrows draw together like he was unsure about this too before something occurs to him.

“That shot came from the office,” he says. It wasn’t an explanation, not a real one anyways, but Steve could think up a million scenarios in which that would be relevant information. None of them were very pleasant. They sit there for a few more moments doing nothing before Tony walks over to the door and locks it. He comes back and gently nudges Steve back, “we’re supposed to sit somewhere in here quietly away from the door. I think, I didn’t really pay attention when he did drills,” he admits. Neither did Steve if he was honest- who thought they’d be in this kind of situation?

He complies with Tony and they sit down at the end of the room. Their butts barely hit the ground before they hear another shot. Both of them jump in surprise, especially because this shot was closer, and they automatically move closer to each other. “Jesus Christ,” Tony says, his voice barely audible. Steve felt the shock that was in the tone too, knew how Tony felt. It wasn’t like he was new to guns going off in his general vicinity but usually he wasn’t the one in immediate danger. The only time he’s been in a situation like this is that time one of the people in his mom’s old apartment building shot someone and that time he was stupid and cut through Central Park too late at night. Both times he was near the danger but he wasn’t really _in_ it. He figured Tony had it worse- he was around guns all the time, hell, he even built them. Tony was probably naïve enough to assume he’d never have one pulled on him unless it was a crazy fan.

“Who do you think that is?” Steve asks, his voice just as low as Tony’s.

“Do I look like I hang out with school shooters?” Tony hisses and then goes stiff. “Shit, Rhodey!” he says a little too loud and goes to move forward but in a surprising show of reflexes Steve grabs him and drags him back.

“Sit the fuck down you crazy person!” Steve snaps at him quietly. “You said Rhodey had a free period and there’s ten minutes of free time before class. He probably isn’t even in the building.” At least Steve hopped he wasn’t because if he was he wasn’t getting into any classrooms. That was how this sort of thing worked and Steve pitied anyone caught in the bathroom now. Usually that was him but today was a good day with his colitis. Thanks god. The last thing he wanted to be remembered for was having a colitis attack in the bathroom that was so loud that the school’s attacker followed the fart sounds and shot Steve dead on the fucking toilet. God even knew how Bucky would react to that, he was already certain Bucky had a nasty case of depression and Steve was the only one who could half snap him out of it. If Steve got shot dead on a toilet he would probably never recover to tell that morbidly hilarious story.

Not that getting shot in a dark room with Tony Stark sounded any better really, and that had nothing redeemable like a morbid kind of humor to make it marginally less horrific. Actually it didn’t make it less horrible but still.

“I don’t know that,” Tony says softly after a few moments. Steve can see that he’s contemplating leaving and he doesn’t blame him because he’d do the same. But as much as he didn’t like Tony he didn’t really want him to walk out to his death. If the person with the gun had targets, and they probably did, there was a good chance Tony was on that list of people. He liked to piss people off and even if he didn’t he was rich and powerful- for some people that was more than enough.

They sit there for a few more moments before Steve speaks, “Rhodey wouldn’t want you to go. I don’t know him all that well but everyone knows he’d do anything to keep you safe.” He’s gotten into more than one fight to save Tony’s ass and given that he was on a scholarship like Steve he suspected it was only Tony’s influence that kept him untouchable. He wondered if Tony realized that every time Rhodey did something like that he was literally putting his life on the line. If he got kicked out of this school that could affect the rest of how he did everything for a long time, possibly forever. It would certainly affect his ability to get into college.

“He’d risk his ass for me,” Tony says immediately. He’s looking at the door with a conflicted expression on his face and Steve sighs.

“Probably yeah, but something tells me he wouldn’t expect you to repay the favor.”

Tony raises an eyebrow at him, “and why’s that?”

“Because I’d do the same for my friends in a heartbeat but I’d lose my shit if they did something like that for me,” he says simply. Bucky’s been looking out for him since they were toddlers but if he risked his ass for Steve like Tony was contemplating for Rhodey? He’d be pissed because his life wasn’t worth Bucky’s. Especially not if there was a chance he wasn’t even in the school.

“Then why aren’t you out the door?” Tony asks, frowning.

Steve lets out a harsh laugh that was probably a bit too loud, “it’s cute that you think I’d ever have friends here.” No one wanted to be friends with the poor kid with an attitude. Rhodey was an anomaly. Probably because he didn’t have a bad attitude.

*

Howard Stark is in a Board meeting ready to snap at someone because he’s in a bad mood and it was hot in the room they were in when his assistant walks in looking pale. Normally he’d have no qualms with telling her to fuck off but something about her demeanor was off so he frowns as she walks up to him. “You might want to check the news,” she tells him when she gets to his chair.

He’s tempted to tell her off for saying something so stupid but her body language was so off that he takes out his phone only to find a bunch of missed calls and texts from Maria. His phone had been on silent because of the meeting but Maria only ever called if there was something wrong. Hell, these days she only ever spoke to him if there was something drastically wrong so instead of checking the news he excuses himself and calls his wife.

“You selfish fucking prick!” Maria shrieks at him when she picks up.

“Calm down Maria, I was in a meeting. What is so important that you called sixteen times?” he snaps more than asks.

“There’s been a shooting Howard, at Tony’s school and no one is telling me any-“ He hangs up on her and leaves without a glance backward. People might think he didn’t care about his son but he did. Tony was the most precious thing he had and his heart was steadily racing harder as he reaches the lobby of Stark Industries and reality sets in.

Well, people might give Maria the shaft but no one was about to shove him aside until he knew where his son was and if he was safe.

*

Clint manages to wake Bucky up and very painfully has to re-explain what had happened. God, he never ever wanted to see someone look the way Bucky did ever again if he could help it. Phil, thankfully, had already heard by the time Bucky is back on his feet and ready to take on the world to save Steve like a fucking idiot and he finds Clint easily. There were really only four places he would be anyways. “I heard. Want me to drive?” he asks.

Bucky doesn’t even answer; he just starts running to Phil’s car. “You don’t think he’s going to do something stupid do you?” Phil asks.

Clint snorts, “stupid is Bucky’s middle name but if we’ve heard about it someone has called the cops. Let them hold him back.” Phil doesn’t look confident in that method of dealing with things but they jog off to his car anyways and find Bucky pacing in front of it, annoyed.

“What took you so long?” he snaps as they get there.

“It was three seconds, Bucky. Whatever Steve’s fate is three seconds isn’t likely to change that,” Phil says grimly. Clint wants to smack him for that insensitive comment but Phil was just like that. He was always the more logical, step-by-step type kind of guy and honestly Bucky probably needed that so instead of complaining about semantics and words he gets in the car and so does Bucky. They set off and Clint has no idea what the hell they thought they were going to do but he thought it was gallant that they were going to do anything really.

He still couldn’t believe this was happening on _Steve’s_ end of town. Kids that went to prep schools didn’t usually have much to worry about and that had been half the reason why Bucky had encouraged Steve to go back when he got in. He had only applied out of spite and Clint loved him for it. Steve Rogers was one hell of a spitfire and he wished he had the energy to be as petty as Steve was on any given basis.

For the first time since meeting him, though, Clint hopes to hell that Steve reigns in his temper because this time it could get him hurt. _Really_ hurt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for death (not of any of the characters), and violence.

Tony keeps checking his phone for service and he moves around the room as he does it. Steve was tempted to remind him that they were supposed to stay in place but he understood the need to do something. He had long ago grabbed his sketchbook and started doodling because his brain was moving too fast and he needed something to do. “Will moving around really help?” Steve mumbles at him. It’s been ten minutes since the last shot and Steve was kind of hoping that the police had responded and they were safe to go now but he wasn’t going to take his chances.

“The person doing this is using a cell jammer. If I move out of range I’ll get service back. Problem is that I don’t know where the jammer is to get out of service. For all I know I could be just on the cusp of out of range or it could be on the other side of that wall,” Tony says, lifting his phone in the air. He glances at the small table to his left and Steve silently tells him that he better fucking not try and climb on that table to get service. Thankfully Tony seems to agree that that’s too risky and he stays off of it.

“How far do those things reach?” Steve asks.

Tony shrugs, “depends on who makes it. Cheap jammers have a range of thirty or so feet, ones that SI makes for police and military purposes can knock out half of New York. Lets hope I didn’t make this.”

“Better hope you didn’t make the gun either,” Steve mumbles. He regrets saying it as soon as it’s out because that was insensitive and it wouldn’t technically be Tony’s fault of he made the gun anyways. Just because he made the weapon didn’t mean he chose for people to use it. But at the same time if he didn’t make it no one would use it.

“I told you it was Hammer tech,” Tony grumbles, sitting back down beside Steve. That’s when the third shot goes off and they both jump hard, not expecting that.

“That,” Tony says quietly, “I made. Military grade, and extremely efficient.”

“Fucking great, we’re all doomed now,” Steve mumbles.

“Thanks,” Tony says.

Steve squints, “for?”

“The faith in my ability to make dangerous weapons. Look, I have to go deal with this,” he says and he goes to get up but Steve grabs him and drags him back down.

“Jesus Christ sit your ass down,” he hisses, “you aren’t going anywhere!”

Tony just glares at him, looking surprisingly determined. “I made the damn gun, I’m not going to let some asshole use it to kill people.”

Steve rolls his eyes, “you’ve been letting some asshole use your guns to kill people since you started making the fucking things. Quit with the moral epiphany out of nowhere and stay the fuck down. Besides, you didn’t have a problem with Hammer guns killing people.”

This time Tony rolls his eyes, “they jam every other shot, I didn’t figure the shooter would last long using one of those _and_ they barely even shoot straight. Dude might as well have used spaghetti as a weapon. But my weapons? They’re not the kind of thing you fuck around with and its hardly like we give them to terrorists!” Tony hisses at him.

“You don’t know who gets your guns, you just see the bottom line when they buy them. Don’t act like only the morally just and wise get them, this is America. Everyone has a fucking gun, my _mother_ has a gun!” For house defense purposes- they lived in an area of town that got robbed a lot not that Steve thought a gun would stop the motivated- but still.

Tony, to his intense surprise, looks like this is the first time he’s ever considered this possibility and Steve shakes his head. How willfully ignorant could a person possibly be about this kind of thing? _Seriously_? Did Tony truly believe that only good people bought weapons? For a genius he was pretty fucking stupid if he believed that.

“Oh come on, there has to be like… screening or something. You can’t just give guns to whoever,” Tony says weakly.

“In Canada. Did you miss the constitutional right to bear arms in history or something? I can’t believe you design and sell weapons and you don’t know about gun laws!” Technically New York was pretty restrictive in their gun laws compared to say, Kansas, but _still_. He figured someone who sold _weapons_ would know something like that.

“There has so be gun laws,” Tony says dumbly.

Steve rolls his eyes, “they vary from state to state and a lot of people that aren’t from America consider our gun laws very lax and mind boggling. How do you live on this planet without knowing about gun law debates in America? And you need a license to get a gun in New York. And a special permit to have one in this city in particular,” he says, not entirely sure how or why he knows this.

“Well minors can’t get guns,” Tony says, looking like he was wondering if America actually gave guns to minors.

“You can’t buy a gun unless you’re eighteen, Tony, Jesus. But parents have guns, I’m sure anyone who is motivated could smuggle their parents’ gun to school. Depending on size and their route to school anyways.” Kids that went here were rich for the most part though, they probably didn’t have to worry about public transportation like Steve. That made smuggling marginally easier.

Tony remains silent for a few moments, “I figured we had gun laws. Like good ones. Are our laws not good?” he asks.

Jesus. If someone told Steve yesterday that he’d be talking to Tony Stark about gun laws in the middle of a school shooting he would have told that person that it was incredibly insensitive to joke about that kind of thing. Now he just rubs his temples because his head hurt and his lungs were getting more irritated by the minute. Stress and the chemicals from the dark room, Steve knows. “Depends on who you ask, Tony.”

“Well what do you think?” Tony asks him.

This wasn’t the time or place. This _really_ wasn’t the time or place though if trends on gun law debates held true there’d be an uptake in people arguing for them as soon as this ended. And the opposing side would say guns are the solution to gun violence. More guns meant people were deterred from attacking. “Are you really asking me about gun politics right now?” Steve asks, flabbergasted.

Tony shrugs, “seemed relevant given that we’re being shot up.” If Tony hadn’t sealed his place in hell before that extremely insensitive comment he sure as fuck did afterwards.

“You are unbelievable,” Steve hisses, “and I don’t have a problem with guns. It’s the people who own them I take issue with.”

“Well, this was nice. I’m going to go find that guy now and put an end to this,” Tony says and stands up. Steve shoots to his feet; shocked that Tony was even _considering_ this.

“No you are not, sit down!” he snaps.

“Yes I _am_ now stop trying to stop me!” Tony snaps back, voice rising to almost normal levels.

“Shhh!” Steve hisses at him. “Now how the hell do you think you’re going to take out someone with a god damn military grade weapon if your guess was right?” he asks.

He expects that to trip Tony up but he doesn’t even hesitate. “I made the damn thing, I know its weaknesses. All weapons have problems, plus I’ll know exactly how proficient of a gun user the shooter is as soon as I see the way they carry the weapon. That’ll go a long way in knowing what to do.”

That… was far more of a well thought out answer than he expected. Steve sighs because he didn’t know how to argue against that other than ‘you’re about to fucking die’ and Tony didn’t seem intent on listening to that. “You’re an idiot for this, Tony. You do realize you’ll probably die, right?”

“I don’t care, I made this mess I have to clean it up. So get out of my way,” Tony tells him. Steve hadn’t even realized that he had moved into Tony’s path until Tony tells him to move and then he does something stupid like he always did.

“Fine, then I’m coming with you,” he says. This gives Tony pause and Steve considers this a victory on his behalf. So Tony was stupid enough to risk his own life, obviously he wasn’t wiling to risk Steve’s life just as easily.

*

Rhodey keeps trying to text Tony about what the hell he wanted from Chipotle but no, of course he wasn’t answering his damn phone. Go figure. Rhodey decides to be nice and buy Tony food and he doesn’t even have the common decency to text back. It probably didn’t matter that much because Tony always got the same thing but it was still common courtesy to ask. One of these days Tony would switch things up on him and he’d look like a tit when he brought back the wrong thing. Still, he grabs Tony’s usual order after eating his own food and he goes to head back to the school.

It was kind of weird that Tony still hadn’t text back given that he’s been gone for almost an hour and Tony lived on his phone. Usually he paid a little less attention to it during that photography class he was taking but he also knew for a fact that there was no way Steve Rogers was falling for Tony’s usual act. Steve was one of the rare people around school that Rhodey actually related to because he was one of the rare kids here on a scholarship. Unlike most of the people in the school he wasn’t born with a silver spoon up his ass and he wasn’t a total asshole. They had history together and he was supposed to put in a good word for Tony but there was just no way Steve would go anywhere near him.

As much as he loved Tones he was more than a little naïve when it came to a lot of things because he just didn’t need to pay attention to things like poverty. Steve didn’t have Rhodey’s patience in just ignoring how little Tony truly knew about the subject because he was generally far more outspoken about how unfair things were to a lot of people. Where Rhodey preferred to keep his head down Steve spoke up and he was loud and vicious about it too. They had a debate class together last year and Steve mopped the floor with everyone in the room except for him. Unlike most of the rest of the class he knew where Steve’s arguments would go because, like Steve, he lived a lot of the realities that populated the ‘controversial’ debate topics they were handed in that class. Steve was good, very good, but Rhodey knew how to combat his arguments in a way a lot of the rest of the class didn’t. He was particularly proud that he won that debate on police brutality and even Steve had looked surprised there.

Point was he was hardly Tony’s type. Tony just hasn’t realized it yet and he kept chasing after a lost cause because Steve wasn’t star struck by him. Tony had a predictable type and that type was not at all into him. It wasn’t that he had a desire to chase after people who didn’t have an interest in dating him; he just had an interest in people who didn’t try and throw themselves at him immediately. It was almost funny to watch how many people threw themselves at Tony looking for his attention when that was the fastest way for him to end up disinterested in them. All they had to do was either treat him like a normal person or ignore his presence like Steve did and he was suddenly interested. It worked for him and Pepper though he and Pepper have agreed that they might love Tony to pieces but they were both better off without the drama that followed him everywhere.

He checks his phone a few more times on his way back and he wonders if he’s wrong about Steve not giving into Tony’s chasing after him. He thought Tony should cut his losses before he actually invaded Steve’s space and _really_ pissed him off but maybe Tony did or said something right. He doubted it but the only reason he could think of for why Tony wasn’t checking his phone was making out with Steve. It was probably the only thing that would keep him from the device for long. He found his phone more fascinating and less disappointing than most people.

What he doesn’t expect is to walk up to the school only to find a crap ton of police cars around the old building. For a moment he considers walking away, a conditioned response from his dad back when he was still alive, because police tended to hassle him. They looked at Rhodey funny too but he was usually with Pepper or Tony so he usually didn’t get much more than a look unless he was in his own neighborhood. But they looked like they were in a frenzy of some sort and there were a lot of other emergency personal now that Rhodey noticed- was that a _SWAT_ team- so he decides to approach.

“Um,” he says to the nearest officer to him, a short white man who looked kind of like that dude who played John in the BBC Sherlock. “What’s going on?” he asks.

The cop turns and glares at him, obviously intent on either ignoring him or getting Rhodey away from him somehow. “Police matters, kid. Get lost,” he says dismissively.

“Uh-” Rhodey says, about to speak again but the cop cuts him off.

“Police _matters_ kid-” he starts but another cop cuts him off.

“Ross, the kid goes here. Did you miss the uniform?” the other cop asks. A tall black guy, go figure.

“How did you get out?” he asks in a far gentler tone than the John-From-BBC-Sherlock used. Wait, Ross. Whatever.

“I walked out?” he says frowning. “Should I have like… done something else?”

“What door did you come out of?” the cops asks. Rhodey raises an eyebrow and points to the front door. This seems to confuse the cop and the other guy, Ross, rolls his eyes.

“He’s wasting your time,” he snaps, “we have bigger worries here Sam.”

Sam was considering something else though and he was obviously ignoring that Ross guy. Good. “When did you leave?” he asks.

Rhodey checks his phone for the time, “almost an hour ago. Look, I’m going to be late for class so can I know what’s going on here because this is a weird amount of cops. Is like… like a drug bust or something because Hammer probably has an entire locker full of coke and Adderall.” Tony would be proud for selling Hammer out like this and he was somewhat impatient to get back to Tony so he could tell him about it.

Ross lets out a short laugh, “oh you’re not going to class kid, there’s a shooter in there.”

The sentence is barely out of his mouth an Rhodey makes a run for it because Tony was in there and _shit_ he hasn’t answered his fucking phone for an _hour_ he could be dead or dying! He doesn’t get far because that Sam guy had fast reflexes and he caught Rhodey on his way by. “Jesus kid, you can’t go running in there!” he yells, struggling to hold Rhodey back.

Rhodey fights hard against him, “you don’t understand, I have a friend in there!”

“I get that man, but you can’t go running into this! We’ll do our best to get the students out, Jesus stop fighting me,” Sam tells him. Rhodey contemplates his actions here because he only had two.

Option One- he punched a cop and maybe got arrested or even shot for punching a cop. Or Option Two- he ran into the school and maybe got shot anyways _after_ punching the cop. Okay actually he only had one option and Sam seemed nice but Tony was his best friend. He couldn’t _leave_ him in there so he does something very stupid that his mama would beat his ass for and he punches a cop in the face full force. Sam wasn’t expecting it because Rhodey had stopped struggling and he had loosened his grip so he stumbles back and Rhodey bolts.

He had to admire that cop’s reflexes because he tackles Rhodey before he gets ten feet away and they both hit the ground, skidding a little. “You are not going in there kid, quit while you’re ahead!” Sam yells.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for violence and a small bit of gore.

Sam leans down next to him and Rhodey glares at him because his hands were uncomfortable folded behind his back. “Look kid, I didn’t want to cuff you but I’m not confident that you’ll stay here instead of running off as soon as I turn my back. Am I right?” he asks and Rhodey glares straight ahead. “Thought so. Is your friend anyone I know?”

He probably at least recognized the family names of most of the kids who went here because their parents were all rich business people for the most part. “Tony Stark,” he says, still glaring ahead.

“You’re James Rhodes!” Sam says, face lighting up despite the nasty black eye that was forming. Rhodey turns at this, surprised that Sam would know _him_ from Tony. “You’ve won a lot of math competitions, early admission into MIT, right? Actually didn’t they ask you to go? My kid looks up to you.”

That… was probably the weirdest thing someone has ever say to him. “You… know about that?” he asks. Most people only ever focused on Tony and that was fine with him. He’s never liked being the center of attention like Tony did unless he was drunk and given how stupid Tony got when he drank he was usually sober so he could go save his best friend’s ass.

“Yeah man, it isn’t often black kids are in the news because they did something good. Besides Tony talks about you all the time, you’ve got second hand fame. Where exactly is Tony in the school?” he asks. Rhodey tells him, giving him general directions on where in the school the photography lab was. Sam looks confused as to why Tony would be in a photography class and Rhodey felt that too.

“He’s chasing after some guy, it’s a complete waste of his time but you can’t tell Tony Stark nothin,” he says grumpily.

Sam nods, looking like he genuinely knew that was true and he probably did if he kept up with the news. “Might have saved his life though, the shooter is on the other side of the school last we knew. We’re preparing to send someone in.”

Rhodey hadn’t realized how tense he was until he relaxes and he feels horrible for it instantly. Being happy that Tony isn’t in danger meant being happy that someone else was and that… was awful. But he would freely admit that he was selfish and cruel enough to want someone else to get hurt over Tony. Not his proudest moment admittedly but he figured that was pretty human. “I’m uh… not actually arrested am I?” Rhodey asks after a few moments of silence.

Sam shakes his head, “nah kid, I couldn’t possibly arrest you for that when I’d probably do the same for my friends. Just don’t tell your friends that you got away with punching an officer, okay?” He raises an eyebrow to give Rhodey a _look_ and Rhodey agrees even though he was absolutely telling this story to everyone he ever comes into contact with for the rest of his life, starting with Tony when he gets out of this.

“What!” that first cop, Ross, says as he walks by. He stops to glare at Sam, “he assaulted a police officer!”

“With all due respect Ross, fuck off. You telling me you wouldn’t do the same?” he asks and they must argue enough that Ross doesn’t think he’ll get anywhere because he just swears, shakes his head, and walks away. Sam turns back to him, “he wouldn’t because he’s a coward but I figured that’d get him to leave you alone,” Sam tells him. Rhodey is grateful because he didn’t really want a criminal record on top of a maybe dead best friend.

*

Steve, if he got out of this alive, was going to kick Tony’s ass. He probably wouldn’t win but he could damn well try and Tony was vain enough that he’d be more worried about his face that Steve punching him. Tony had gone out first, looking around and finding nothing before he stepped out into the hallway. Steve had grabbed his inhaler because he was far more short of breath than usual and he fully anticipated an asthma attack soon but with any luck it would hold off until he wasn’t in immediate danger.

Tony, the fucking asshole, actually tries to lock him in while he does this but Steve threatens to beat the door down and Tony was smart enough not to test that. He figured threatening to make a bunch of noise to draw the attention of the shooter would work even though that’s technically what Tony wanted anyways, the shooter near him. Steve is surprised to find how stealthily Tony moves through the school. Nothing about Tony Stark was subtle on any given day so he was surprised to find that Tony actually knew what subtlety was.

“My aunt Peggy is a spy, don’t tell anyone that. She taught me a few things in the event I find myself in danger, which is high given my relation to Howard,” Tony explains when he sees Steve looking.

“What the fuck?” Steve mumbles almost too quiet to hear. Who the hell knew spies? Tony he guessed. He wanted to meet this Peggy person now. He also wanted to know how often Tony was in danger for him to have learned something about stealth. Being Howard’s son he figured that had to be at least somewhat often, the man probably got a minimum of five hundred death threats a day. Of course now that meant his plans to beat Tony up were probably shot. Damnit.

They move along slowly towards the direction of the last shot and Steve’s breathing steadily gets worse. “Jesus do you have to breathe so loud?” Tony hisses at him, “you sound like you’re in a fucking hazmat suit back there.”

“I have asthma, you ass. I can’t help it.” He didn’t like it either because he was probably in more danger like this but he didn’t have much of a choice.

“Go back to the photography lab,” Tony tells him.

Steve goes to protest this but all that will do would start an argument so Steve rethinks his stance and cuts the argument off at the root. “Yeah, back to sit in a room of chemicals, that’ll help my breathing,” he says sarcastically.

This obviously throws Tony for a moment and he looks over at a classroom door before he remembers there’s no way they were getting in there. “Go hide in a bathroom or something,” Tony tells him. Steve flips him off but they duck into the nearest bathroom anyways. Tony sees the kid before he does and heaves, doubling over and sticking the dead kid right in Steve’s line of sight. “I am _not_ hiding with a dead kid,” Steve says, his voice rising a bit at the end in fear.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” Tony says, shuddering hard. This must have been where that second shot came from, the one that was closer to them. The shooter moved back in the direction they came though, headed back towards the other end of the school.

“Do you know who that is?” Steve asks. He didn’t but he paid no attention to the politics around the school while Tony was dead center in the middle of them.

“No clue,” Tony says, looking a little green. “Does it really matter now?”

Steve shrugs, “figured we could try and see if there could be a predictable pattern in victims I guess.” He takes in a shaky breath and he can _feel_ his airways constricting. This was not the fucking time but he pulls his inhaler out of his back pocket and does his best to breathe in the medicine. Tony walks over to him and gently pushes him towards the door and away from the gore. Steve was never going to be able to use this bathroom again.

“Will you be okay?” Tony asks as Steve does his best to breathe. He ignores Tony because he needed to be able to breathe in peace for a moment while his airways stopped being a bunch of dicks. “Are you okay?” Tony asks again after a moment. Steve glares at him as he takes another hit of his inhaler and Tony leaves him be while he works on breathing. God he hated his body sometimes.

“I’ll be fine,” he gets out eventually. He’s half doubled over when they hear a phone buzz. They look at each other for a moment and Tony pulls his phone out, watching as it continues to buzz.

“We must be out of range from that jammer. Pretty sure I had no service two feet ahead though. Probably more than one jammer. Rhodey got out just fine, he sent me like fifty texts about what I wanted from Chipotle.” He visibly relaxes and leans against the wall looking very much like he wanted to slide down the wall and stay there.

“Does that mean someone _else_ could be out of the range of those jammers? So someone could call the cops?” That would be extremely helpful.

“Probably yeah. Could be what this one was doing when he um… met his untimely end.” Tony’s analysis probably wasn’t too far off except he mentioned that he had no service a few feet forward. Given that the shooter had to backtrack here he figured that this kid was important for some reason.

“Great. Lets hope that’s a thing that has happened. Any ideas on what we do from here?” he asks.

Tony sighs, “hope to fuck we don’t get shot when we find the shooter?” Well, there was that. He doubted either one of them wanted to hand out with the dead kid. Granted if they left they may very well _be_ the dead kid.

*

Peter Parker has never really been anyone important. Unlike most of the kids that went to this school he was here because he got a scholarship and most of the time he didn’t really care for the school. People were mean, and he really, _really_ hated Flash Thompson. Flash hated him right back so he didn’t feel too bad about it in the end.

He had no friends here but he had lots back in Queens, like Ned, and he was content with that. So why he was sitting in the middle of the cafeteria contemplating saving the room full of people he had no idea. No one here has ever done him any favors, actually they usually only made fun of him for being poor and unlike Steve Rogers he wasn’t confident enough to tell them off. But he couldn’t just _let_ people die, that was horrible and not something he could live with. They’ve all heard the shots so at least three people were dead. Or at least if this guy’s aim was on point they were.

The events that happen next happened fast so later when Peter is called in to explain what happened the details are hazy. But one minute this guy with long black hair is looking around looking smug with the fear on everyone’s faces and the next Tony Stark of all people bursts onto the scene with Steve Rogers right behind him. Peter isn’t sure who reacted first, Tony or Steve, but the longhaired kid turns to them, obviously surprised, and they both try and shove each other out of the way. Neither of them is successful so Tony tries a different tactic.

“ _Loki_?” he asks, frowning at the shooter. He was trying to distract him or that’s what Peter guesses. Carefully, while the shooter is distracted, Peter slowly slides his algebra textbook off the table, ignoring the way Flash of all people is shaking his head at him.

“Tony Stark, you were on the list. I thought I’d have to hunt you down,” Loki says in a smooth, almost pleasant voice. That voice was going to haunt his dreams for life, Peter decides, but that doesn’t matter right now. He starts looking for a way up to Loki and Flash starts shaking his head harder at him. Peter waves him off, not knowing why he even cared. The girl beside him, Gwen he thinks her name is, points just behind him and Peter can see what she’s trying to say. He nods at her and she gives him a steely look, nodding at him with a hard resolve on her face like she thought this was going to get him killed. It probably would but he doesn’t think about that. If he got shot he’d deal with it then, and if he died Tony didn’t look like he was about to back down despite the gun pointed at him.

“You aren’t holding that right,” Tony says as Peter creeps around the table. Steve notices him crawling along and swallows hard, wheezing slightly like he was about to have an asthma attack.

“What list?” Steve asks, “why are you even _doing_ this?” That’s a stupid question, Peter thinks, because bad people did bad things and obviously Loki was a bad person.

“Why not?” Loki asks him back, laughing like this was amusing to him or something. Peter feels sick just thinking about it.

Tony takes that moment to lunge at him and Peter has to admire his bravery, even as the gun goes off and Tony goes flying back. He does his best not to think of the blood, about the fact that he probably just watched someone die and that he was more than likely next.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Steve yells, hands flying to his blonde hair. “What the fuck is _wrong_ with you!”

“Oh please, lets not act like my kill count is higher than his,” Loki says, pointing at Tony. In an amazing and somewhat horrible turn of events Tony actually _moves_ , like that shot to his chest didn’t actually kill him and Peter feels horrible for him. That gun was _huge_ , he should be dead. Why wasn’t he dead? Peter almost wished he was because living through that had to be worse than dying.

“Who cares about semantics you fucking lunatic! Are you _laughing_?” Steve asks, looking as shocked and horrified as Peter felt. He quietly stands and Steve purposefully moves, keeping Loki’s attention on him. That was the kind of brave Peter wished he could be, standing there like that knowing any breath could be his last but standing there anyways because it meant someone else didn’t get hurt.

“You don’t even care about anyone in this school, Rogers, why should you care if they die?” Loki asks him.

Steve looks disgusted and Peter knew the feeling. “I think the people in this school are a bunch of spoiled brats that need a god damn reality check and to stop acting like they know anything about poverty. I’ve never wanted them to _die_. How could you possibly confuse the two?” he asks. He looks over at Tony and devastation crosses his features as Tony moves again. Peter swallows the bile in the back of his throat and lifts his math text just as Loki must hear him coming.

He swings the math book at the same time Steve jumps and Loki stumbles, a shot going off that _barely_ misses Peter’s shoulder as Steve falls into him. They both hit the ground and Steve manages to slam Loki’s head into the ground hard. It stuns him but it doesn’t knock him out so they continue fighting. Steve, Peter knew, had a lot of health issues and Loki seems to know this too because he does his best to try and throw Steve off with brute strength. Steve was apparently more stubborn that Loki was strong though because he manages to hold on for a frightening few seconds before Loki finally manages to throw him off, delivering a swift kick to Steve’s ribs that sounded like it hurt.

Now or never, Peter guesses, and he hears something slide across the floor. He looks over to find Flash’s textbook on the ground- he knew it was his because his dog ate half the cover- and he goes to reach for it as Loki goes to reach for the gun he had dropped in the midst of this mess. The next few seconds was Peter realizing he had no time to grab the book but he _did_ have time to get to Loki, who was bent over the gun. Prime position, Peter knew, to deliver a swift kick because Flash did it to him semi frequently. So he extends his foot almost without thinking and kicks Loki hard in the head, sending him flying backwards.

“Nice!” Flash yells from behind him. Thankfully when Loki hits the ground he was knocked out because Peter didn’t think he could hit him again, even if he deserved it. He just didn’t have the stomach for violence.


	5. Chapter 5

Tony doesn’t remember what happens between him getting shot and those bright lights that were all around him. Hospital lights. He frowns to himself, wondering how he survived because he should have a pretty nasty hole in his chest if that gun worked right and his guns _always_ worked right. So how and why was he alive? He shouldn’t be. He should be dead at the hands of his own weapon wondering if this was how everyone who has been gunned down by his weapons felt.

Poetic justice was what that was. He deserved it; he knew that now, because no one should make weapons like he had. They were always bigger, better, more efficient. What a nice way of saying it killed more people faster. Disgusting. As long as he lived he was never, _ever_ going to build another weapon again.

When the lights go away there’s a man above him, hovering there for a moment looking down at him with his warm, brown eyes. Tony thinks he’s a guardian angel that he doesn’t deserve. “You were lucky that gun didn’t fire right,” he says in a lightly accented voice, “I’ve seen those used in my old village. That isn’t a weapon you mess around with. You’re a brilliant kid, don’t waste your life.”

 _Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste your life._ The words sick with Tony long after he passes out.

*

Clint sits out of the way while Bucky and Sarah fawn over Steve. Broken ribs was probably the least of his worries when he had apparently _jumped_ the fucking shooter. Rogers had some damn huge cajones Clint would give him that, he sure as fuck wouldn’t have done what Steve did. Of course Bucky and his mom were cursing him out for it now even though he was sleeping. He wondered if he was the only one wondering who was going to pay Steve’s sure to be astronomically high hospital bill but he doesn’t mention it. He lets Sarah and Bucky marvel in the fact that Steve was even alive after playing hero.

Tony Stark didn’t get so lucky- poor bastard got shot point blank with one of his own guns- but he lived against all odds. Clint didn’t know the details yet but he heard rumors about that Loki kid, the shooter, having made some kind of changes to the gun that messed with Stark’s original design and it caused it to fire wrong or something. It didn’t matter; the fact that Stark was alive was a damn miracle. He had been in surgery for some time with some Yinsen dude but the guy must be incredible at his job because he saved Tony from a bullet entering his heart. He couldn’t believe how god damn lucky Stark had to be to be living the life that he had now. If Clint had even a quarter of his luck he wouldn’t have been shuffled through the foster care system since he was four. That alone would have been optimal.

Steve wakes up sometime later and Bucky and Sarah start talking to him at once, chewing him out for being a hero. Steve ignores them both to smile at Clint, “hey man, how’s it going?” he asks.

Clint raises an eyebrow for a moment and breaks out in a grin, “fine now that I know your stupid ass isn’t dead,” he tells him. “You almost gave Phil a heart attack and you _know_ how hard Phil is to shock.”

Steve tries to laugh but winces immediately. “God my ribs hurt, what the hell?”

They all exchange a glace before Sarah’s gaze settles on Bucky. He was the one who could keep Steve calm the easiest. “You uh… apparently jumped the shooter and got booted in the ribs for it,” he explains.

It takes a second but it clicks for Steve, “oh, right. What’ve they got me on, I’m high as hell.”

“Share the wealth, bud. After today I could use a good hit of whatever you’re on,” Clint says, earning dirty looks from Sarah and Bucky. “What?” It was true, he couldn’t help that.

“You’re an insensitive ass Clint but I wouldn’t have you any other way,” Steve tells him, smiling for a moment before his face turned grim. “What… what happened with Tony?” he asks softly.

Clint wants to smack Bucky and Sarah’s faces fall because it’s obvious that Steve assumes the worst and the last thing he needed was this shit so Clint speaks up. “He’s alive,” he tells him.

“Are you just telling me that because you think I’m high enough to forget and you don’t want to give me bad news?” he asks, eyes more shrewd than they had a right to be.

“Would I lie about something like that because it’s easier?” he asks and Steve relaxes some. “You’ve been through hell man, I would never do something like that to make it worse for you. Stark really did live, it’s a goddamn miracle that he did and there were a few touch and go moments but he pulled through. I saw elder Stark all but having a breakdown in the waiting room.” Tony’s mother, Maria Clint thinks her name is, was calm and collected but she was probably in shock. His best friend, the black guy, was also losing it but that redhead that also hung out with Tony looked pretty together. Elder Stark though, Clint knew he was a bastard of epic proportions but he felt bad for him in that moment with the way he was losing his mind over his kid.

Steve relaxes some, “oh, good,” he says and passes back out.

*

Bucky sits at Steve’s side and refuses to move it, even when the nurses threaten him with security. They eventually leave him there though and he promises to stay with Steve when Sarah has to leave on day three to go to work. Not everyone could afford the time off and she took too much time already. He tries to remember how much was in his meager savings, if it was enough to actually help her out, but he’s been awake more than asleep the last couple says so his brain is a little bit fried.

He doesn’t expect someone else to come in but the guy knocks on the wall somewhat uselessly and stands there, waiting for Bucky to respond. “Yeah?” Bucky says finally, raising an eyebrow at the guy in front of him. He was vaguely familiar but Bucky couldn’t place his face.

“Uh… Tony’s got a bug up his ass about Steve and he keeps whining and crying about talking to him so I finally told him I’d bring my phone here so they could video chat because no one in their right mind would let him out of that hospital bed. But uh, looks like he’s sleeping so I’ll leave him be,” he says awkwardly.

It takes an embarrassingly long time for Bucky to put the pieces together. James Rhodes. “You’re telling me _Tony Stark_ cares about Steve?” he says, disbelieve evident in his voice.

Something about this seems to tick Rhodes off because his eyes narrow. “Yeah, Tony cares about Steve. He’s only been following him around like a lost puppy for months,” he says, obviously offended that Bucky would suggest that Tony didn’t care about Steve.

“Maybe he should have taken the hint and buggared off,” Bucky tells him, nose in the air.

“Jesus Buck, why are you being such an asshole?” Steve grumbles, shifting himself a little and wincing.

“I’m not being an asshole, I’m just stating facts. If it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t even be _in_ this mess.” He heard what happened in there, that Tony’s stupidity was the only reason Steve left that room. This was all _Stark’s_ fault.

Steve rolls his eyes, “one, I have a brain of my own so don’t you dare act like Tony forced me into anything. Two, I would have had to leave eventually anyways. The chemicals in the room were bothering my lungs. Hey Rhodey, sorry about Bucky being a jerk,” he says, waving at him.

Rhodey gives Bucky an annoyed look and primly ignores him as he walks past to talk to Steve. “He won’t shut up about you so I finally came up with a solution so we didn’t have to hear it,” Rhodey says, giving Steve a wry smile.

Steve snorts, “sounds like Tony.” Rhodey quickly shows him how to work the phone and sets up the video call.

Stark answers on the first ring, which was _so_ desperate. “Steve! Hey! I uh… didn’t remember much of what happened after getting shot but I heard you were here and I was worried. How’ve you been?” Stark asks, all but vibrating out of his hospital bed.

“Better than you,” Steve says, “just a couple fractured ribs and the usual array of health issues. Nothing like getting shot _point blank_ like you. That was terrifying.”

Tony shrugs like this genuinely didn’t matter to him, “whatever. It’s cool, some doctor named Yinsen saved my ass and I’m pretty sure half of New York sent me flowers. So when are you getting out? They’re making me stay here for a _week_ and I’m already planning my escape.”

“ _Not_ happening,” Rhodey interrupts, briefly sticking his head into the frame so he could glare at Tony.

“I think I’m being released tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it,” he says, wincing. Yeah, Bucky wouldn’t want to ride the subway with taped ribs either.

“Why not? Who wants to be stuck in a hospital?” Tony asks.

“No one,” Steve agrees, “but taking the subway home is not exactly what I want to spend my afternoon doing.” Even Rhodey looked a bit confused at that, which probably meant he had more money than Steve did. That wasn’t totally unusual- Phil was pretty well off despite where he went to school but other than that neither of them spent time with people who had more money than them.

Judging from the look on Tony’s face he didn’t spend time with people who had less money than him. “Why the hell would you take the _subway_ home?” he asks.

“Better than the busses,” Steve answers easily enough. True, the subways were at least smoother and that would be ideal with his ribs.

“Do you not have a car?” Tony asks, frowning.

Steve lets out a harsh laugh and winces immediately. “Tony, no one can afford a car in New York. I can barely afford public transportation. Actually I can’t really afford that either but whatever,” he mumbles. That, at least, Bucky could cover. Probably.

If it wasn’t for the situation Tony’s confusion and slight horror at the situation would have been hilarious. Of course the rich kid had no idea what was going on but given the gravity of everything that came before the laughter doesn’t come for Bucky. “Uh, no. I’ll have my driver pick you up, you can’t go on public transportation with broken ribs,” Tony says. He still looks mildly horrified.

“It’s fine Tony, I don’t need a driver. I can’t even believe you have one of those,” Steve says, shaking his head. “And my ribs are only cracked,” he corrects a half a second too late.

Tony rolls his eyes, “semantics, I don’t really care. Happy will pick you up and if you argue I have heart problems now so I could _die_ if my heart rate goes up or whatever,” he says. Steve glares at him because that was hitting below the belt but Stark looks satisfied that he won. The rest of the conversation is mostly Tony finding out how little Steve really had and Steve getting increasingly annoyed as Tony keeps offering him things. Finally he just hangs up and hands the phone back to Rhodey, who immediately hands it back just as another video call comes through.

This leads to more arguing and Bucky and Rhodey exchange looks, knowing both of their best friends were too stubborn to let it go. Steve manages to press his point and win a few times but Bucky got the feeling Stark was faking him out and judging from the look on Rhodey’s face he was right. Steve doesn’t notice because he’s in too much pain and probably too doped up on whatever painkillers the hospital put him on. Bucky can’t decide if he’s pleased with Tony taking an interest in Steve because he was getting things out of it or if he was pissed off that Tony was spoiling his best friend. It was irrational to be jealous but he couldn’t help it.


	6. Chapter 6

As soon as the video call with Steve ends Tony grabs his computer and starts doing research. Steve was just _talking_ but this was the first time they had a real conversation so Tony didn’t really realize how little Steve had. He was also good at reading people, Steve in particular after watching him for so long, so he knew he wasn’t trying to get anything out of him. That had been more or less proven by the end of the call when Steve nearly burst into tears out of frustration even if Tony was on the fence about the subject.

To say he was surprised was kind of an understatement. He may or may not have done a few illegal things to _get_ his information but once he finds out exactly how little Steve’s mother made and started doing the math he quickly realized there was no way they could possibly live without going into debt every month by at least a couple hundred dollars. It wasn’t for lack of trying on Sarah’s part either- the woman worked two full time jobs. By his calculations she had enough time to sleep and get to her jobs and that was basically it. Not exactly living the dream life then, and with Steve’s health issues he wasn’t exactly in a position to work. He’d also been surprised at the length of health issues Steve had _and_ that he apparently didn’t qualify for disability.

So Tony takes the information and does what he did best- he threw money at it. Paying off the hospital bills was easy enough and that alone would relieve a lot of the pressure they were under. Then he figured he’d pay all their bills because why not? And he sent a bunch of food to their apartment as well; tailored to the diet he doubted Steve stuck to given how expensive gluten free stuff could be. He doesn’t really think much of it until Sarah Rogers bursts through his door looking upset the day after he paid things off.

“You take all this back!” she says, waving a paper around. He had no idea what it was but he could guess.

“No, why would I do that?” he asks.

“I don’t need your charity!” she yells.

Tony snorts, “no offense but you kind of do. Do you _really_ want your crippling debt back?” That seemed like kind of an odd thing to want but what the hell did he know? Until he did some research his understanding of poverty was people living on the streets, not people working multiple full time jobs and _still_ unable to make ends meet. He assumed minimum wage was the minimum that you could pay people before they went into poverty, not that it was well below a living wage. That didn’t even make sense. Why have a minimum wage if minimum wasn’t enough? What the hell was it there for then? Questions he’d look into later he guessed.

“Why are you doing this!” she says, looking like she was losing steam fast. Probably because she ran herself into the ground to pay rent.

“Because you need it? What kind of question is that?” he asks. Why else would he do this?

“What do you want, Stark,” Sarah finally says, rubbing her temples. It takes a long few moments for him to realize what was going on here.

“Wait, do you think I have like… some kind of ulterior motive here?” he asks. What could he even want from them anyways, they had nothing. Certainly nothing he wanted even if they did have something.

“Why else would you do any of this?” she asks tiredly.

That takes a moment for him to even begin to process that. “I… look I’ll be honest here I’m at a loss. I have no motive here other than seeing people who need help and helping them. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to want from you guys, you have nothing, less than nothing really. What could I possibly ask for in exchange for a little bit of money?”

Sarah look him over for a long few moments before she relaxes a little, “you really mean that, don’t you?” she asks.

“Don’t see why I’d lie about that,” he says. There was nothing for him to gain from this and he knew that, he didn’t help Steve out because he was looking for a trade of some sort. Even if he did he would have chosen to help someone who actually had something he wanted.

“I… for being raised with your father you turned out good,” she finally tells him and that is something he takes as a compliment.

“Probably because I hate Howard’s guts. Never wanted to be like him no matter how much he tried to beat it into me.” And then after all of the shit he’s been put through by Howard the man had the gull to come up to him begging for forgiveness and a second chance. Tony told him that people like him didn’t get second chances even if it wasn’t true. He got a second chance and he didn’t deserve it. But he’d be damned if he didn’t spend the rest of his life earning his right to life. He wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a reason and he had no idea what it was but he was determined to find out.

Sarah walks up to him and gently squeezes his arm, “thank you,” she says softly.

Tony shakes his head, “don’t worry about it, it wasn’t that much.” It was the least he could do really, it wasn’t like he was lacking the money to help.

“To you maybe, but what you did for me will change my entire life for the better. Please understand that money might be disposable to you but to me? I’ve never even _seen_ the amount of money you just spent on my son’s hospital bills alone. This isn’t something small, Tony.” With that she leaves, letting Tony sit with her words. It wasn’t something he could fathom though, a little bit of money changing someone’s life like that. Was that true? How many other people were like Sarah and only needed what he considered pocket change to change their whole lives?

Suddenly his wealth feels more like a burden than a privilege. How could he had so much when others had so little? It wasn’t right.

*

Steve had been royally _pissed_ at Tony but what could he do? He couldn’t take anything back and after three days of eating the food he bought Steve could _feel_ the difference in his body. He had less cramps, he was tired less, he spent way less time in the bathroom- generally he felt better. But this was the kind of thing he could accept from someone _ever_ and in the following days after coming home from the hospital Tony gives him more and more _stuff_. The first thing to come was a phone, that prototype he mentioned before the shooting happened, then came the laptop, then a StarkPad not that he needed it with the laptop, and then _clothes_ of all things. There was even stuff for his mom in there.

He doesn’t know what to do with all the things that are suddenly being handed to him. Yeah, he wanted all of this stuff but he didn’t want someone to _hand_ it to him, he just wanted a fair shot at life and to not be living his life as poor as he was and then Tony just handed him the ticket out. It was overwhelming the amount of wealth Tony was throwing his way and when he said something to his mom, who had already been to visit Tony apparently, she told him that he genuinely didn’t know how much money he had. To him this was as simple as paying some bills when to them Steve’s hospital debt alone was driving them into the ground. It wasn’t like he could help being sick, that wasn’t even something they could give up. They’d given up most everything else unless they came into a little extra money and went to the movies.

In hindsight he should have expected the call, Tony gave him the phone, of course he’d program his number into it, but it still surprises him. “Hey!” Tony says enthusiastically. He looked much less tired and like he’d been through hell than he had earlier in the week.

“Uh, hey,” Steve says, offering a weak smile.

Tony notices something is off right away and frowns, “are you alright? I got that diet you’re supposed to be on right, right? Because I did some research and I thought I did okay but-”

Steve cuts him off. “It’s fine Tony, maybe a little too fine actually. You don’t need to do all this stuff for me. I don’t even know _why_ you’re doing all this stuff for me.” He knew Tony had some ridiculous crush on him but he’s not once put out the suggestion that this was supposed to lead to something. It was starting to put him on edge because people weren’t just nice for no reason.

“What is with you and your mom? Can’t I just do something nice?” he asks.

“Nothing in life comes for free, Tony. Do you like… I don’t know, want a date out of this or something?” he asks. It was the only thing he could think of that they had to offer but from the disgusted look on Tony’s face that wasn’t it.

“Ew, gross, I’m not trying to _buy_ you! If I wanted a prostitute I’d just go find one. Jesus, for all the ranting you do about poor people you’re not very good at accepting help when it’s given to you.” Probably because he’s learned that help came with strings, there wasn’t a dollar to be earned without sacrificing something for it and it was usually more than time. Even social welfare programs required you to jump through hoops to prove you needed it, and required you to continue jumping through hoops to continue getting it. Sure, there were the people who cheated the system but they were usually the rich people who evaded taxes and yelled at the poor to pay theirs.

It had been a given that Tony was one of those people if for no other reason than being raised in that world. It was hardly his _fault_ he was born into that position, but most people in his position learned to use it against people. And now… now Steve didn’t know what to do because Tony didn’t seem intent on using his money to control him or get anything from him. There was a part of him that wondered if Tony was playing a game but he’s seen the games Tony played. He was smart and clever but he wasn’t subtle. He knew it and used it to his advantage but this wasn’t exactly a situation in which he could hide his motive.

“I… I don’t need this stuff Tony. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate it but this is a _lot_ and I don’t even know what I’ve done for you to take an interest in me. I… don’t know what to do here,” he says stupidly. It was woefully insufficient but it at least somewhat described his feelings.

“Um, accept the stuff? What am I supposed to tell you here? I mean the phone thing is actually something I needed to test to technically you’re doing me a favor by using it. How is it, by the way?” Tony asks.

“Infinitely better than my last phone,” Steve says immediately. It did everything about a billion times faster, the screen resolution was a dream, Steve’s emojis no longer looked like low-rent blobs, and the way the phone picked up on wifi signals was incredible. He managed to hack into his neighbor’s wifi and despite being a fair distance from the modem he still had wifi across the apartment. It helped that his neighbor’s modem was apparently excellent but still.

“That’s no help, my own shit would make a better phone than the junk you had. How’s the call quality, texting capabilities, internet browsing, video calls seem to be working fine, I have a list I’ll email it to you,” Tony tells him. Steve shakes his head as Tony clicks some buttons on his computer.

“Do you ever stop?” he asks. He isn’t rude about it he’s just curious. He was also curious about how Tony was handling… things but he seemed to be fine, better than before even and Steve really had to wonder about that. He didn’t want to bring it up either because asking someone how they were doing after that time their school got shot up was just insensitive even if he had also been there.

“Nope,” Tony chirps, “it’s how I roll. How’ve you been since you got home? You look better than when I saw you last.”

Steve snorts, “because the last time you saw me I was in a hospital. I’m fine though, all things considered.” He’s been in too much pain to really notice any lingering affects of the uh… attack. That and he’s been distracted by Tony, Bucky showing up every day after school with Clint in tow, and his new gluten free diet that was changing his life. Who knew it really made that much of a difference? “You seem to be doing well,” he notes.

Tony grins, “as always. Nothing keeps me down long. So I was thinking of taking something of a vacation, wanna come?” he asks.

“Where to?” Steve asks, entertaining this insanity for some reason. There was no way he was going anywhere on vacation unless Tony meant a different pent house in New York but Steve got the feeling that wasn’t the case.

“France probably. Maybe Italy. Or somewhere warm, I haven’t decided. What do you think?” Tony asks. It takes Steve a moment to figure out that he’s actually asking for his opinion.

“Uh, I am not jumping countries on a whim. Mostly I can’t afford it, but also I can’t just _leave_.” It was pure luck that he had a passport, he had gotten one when he briefly had a job and used it to visit some friends in Canada who insisted that he had to eat like five hundred Kinder eggs. Logan and Wada were great though and there was that time he got run out of town in small town Canada to look back on fondly. Not that he told his mother about that, obviously. Or Bucky. Clint knew and he thought the story of Logan, Wade, him, and the bar fight was hilarious. Especially the bit with Logan. He also thought Steve’d diet of mostly Tim Hortons and poutine was hilarious but Steve’s stomach, intestines, and colon completely disagreed. But Wade and Logan insisted on Canadian food. In their defense Canada made a mean poutine that was apparently better in Montreal.

“One, it went without saying that I’m paying and two, school isn’t even a concern on account of us all being traumatized by that time we got shot up there. So why not go on vacation somewhere? Rhodey’s coming if that’s a motivator. I haven’t told him yet but he’ll have a bag ready, I do this semi frequently. You can bring a friend if you want,” Tony tells him, wiggling his eyebrows.

How the hell Tony could _joke_ about a school shooting he had no idea but this was Tony. He’s never seen him take anything abundantly seriously and they’ve gone to school together for two years. “I can’t ask you to do that,” Steve says, “that’s just… that’s ridiculous.”

“One, you didn’t ask. Two, France or somewhere south of the boarder?” he asks.

They argue back and forth before he ends up deciding that they were going to go somewhere south of the boarder and tells someone named Jarvis to pick a country. Then he goes back to arguing with Steve about who was paying for what until Steve finally tells him that he wasn’t going, that was final. Tony tells him that he bought the ticket anyways so he had no choice to go now and he was still holding out an offer for one of Steve’s friends to go.

In the end he calls Clint because he figured Clint was the most deserving of a vacation out of all of his friends given his rough background and also aside from Phil he was pretty sure he was the only friend he had with a passport. Clint jumps on the free trip immediately and Tony tells Steve he should be more like Clint.


	7. Chapter 7

Steve doesn’t think any of them anticipate the after affects of what happened to them even though, in hindsight, their reactions were inevitable. He’s asleep, thankfully dreamlessly, when he hears it but his body reacts before his mind even fully wakes up. It takes a long moment for him realize that his breathing heavy wasn’t because he was having an asthma attack; he was having a panic attack. When he heard a gunshot, or maybe fire works, he realizes why but his breathing gets heavier regardless of the kernel of rational thought in his head.   
His heart is beating too fast, his vision is blurring, and he’s trying to concentrate on breathing but his control is slipping. This isn’t new for his neighborhood, he tells himself, this happened all the time and he was never in danger. He wasn’t in danger. He wasn’t.   
For once he’s thankful to the asthma because he already knew how to breathe through asthma attacks and it was useful for panic attacks too. It takes him a long time still to gain control of his breathing and he knows right away he wasn’t getting back to sleep. He glances at the clock and finds that it’s four in the damn morning and sighs. Guess he was going to have a long day. He doesn’t really think when he texts Bucky, and of all people, Tony. He doesn’t tell either one of them about the panic attack because he doesn’t know Tony well enough and he doesn’t want Bucky to worry. He’d be fine, maybe, with some time.   
When his phone goes off he’s pretty sure Bucky has guessed what happened but it’s Tony calling. He frowns and answers it, unsure what Tony could possibly want from him this early in the morning. “Hey um, this is going to sound weird but have you… I don’t know, think you’ve been poisoned in the last twenty four hours or so?”   
“What?” Steve asks, giving the phone a weird look.   
“Look, I don’t know I thought I was having a heart attack or something but JARVIS, that’s my AI, said that I wasn’t and apparently I haven’t been poisoned but- Well something happened,” he says dumbly.   
Steve sighs, “let me guess. Racing heart, sweating, troubles breathing, chest pains, burry vision, any of this sounds familiar?” he asks.   
“Oh,” Tony says sounding a little more hopeful, “yeah that all sounds right. I’m guessing you know what happened then?”  
“Panic attack. What happened before?” he asks, wondering what Tony’s trigger was. He’d make an effort to avoid it for the time being if he thought he needed to.   
“A what? That can’t be it, I thought I was dying. I know what panicking feels like and it wasn’t that,” Tony says.   
“That’s because panicking and panic attacks are completely different Tony. Panic is a normal human reaction; panic attacks tend to stem from trauma or anxiety. Which we have in spades,” he points out. It occurs to him that he’s actually lucky he knew what the hell just happened to him because Tony obviously didn’t. God, that would have been so much worse. He’s seen Bucky have panic attacks, he knew how to deal with them even if this was the first time he’s ever dealt with one. And it helped that his first reaction when he couldn’t breathe wasn’t to panic more thanks to the asthma. Tony wouldn’t have had any of that knowledge so no wonder he thought he was dying. Steve was still on edge, but he at least knew why and he knew how to deal with the sudden onslaught of anxiety. At least the gun shots seemed to have stopped.   
“I… what? Come on, there is no way that was just anxiety or whatever. People don’t do that, anxiety is normal,” Tony says in a disbelieving tone.   
“Some anxiety yeah, but mental health issues are a thing Tony. It’s not really surprising that we’re experiencing this. PTSD is pretty normal following the kind of screwed up crap we just went through.” They probably hadn’t noticed until now because they were so preoccupied with everything else going on. There was the hospital, cops, Bucky glued himself to Steve’s ass until him mom showed up to force him to go to school again and then he made sure to come by after every day, all that stuff with Tony. And Tony has been pretty busy himself with all the money he’s been throwing at Steve.   
“PTSD. Isn’t that the thing soldiers get? We weren’t in a war zone, Steve,” Tony says. Trying to talk himself out of having mental health problems even though Steve was pretty sure he had them even before this. It was hardly like Tony was normal by any stretch of the imagination.   
“Weren’t we? Normal teens don’t go through what we did Tony, pretty sure that’ll screw anyone up.” He really hoped that other kid, Peter Parker he thinks his name is, was okay. He couldn’t believe how brave that kid was, snaking up on Loki like that. Even Steve wasn’t sure he’d ever be that brave. Or Tony, throwing himself at someone with a fucking giant gun still half pointed at him. Seeing that would be enough to scar a person for life let alone being one of the people actually involved in that mess.   
“I… don’t really want PTSD,” Tony says softly.   
Steve can’t help but snort and he winces as pain shoots through his ribs. “No one does. I didn’t think about it either, if that makes you feel better.” He should have, he knew better than to not consider that possibility. Hell, Bucky had panic attacks from regular every day stress because sometimes things were too much for him and he didn’t really go through anything as crappy as Steve just had. He saw a dead kid, almost watched another kid die, and had to distract a shooter while another kid snuck up on him to knock him out.   
“How did you know about that?” Tony asks. It sounds like it just occurred to him that Steve knew a lot for someone who all but admitted to not having this particular issue before this mess.   
“My best friend has severe anxiety. No real reason for it like people would think, not like us, Bucky’s just messed up a little. Clint too but he’s had a shitty life. I’ve been dealing with friends who have mental health issues for a long time so I knew what was happening when it happened. And I have asthma so I already know about the breathing exercises and all that. I was lucky.” Tony, not so much. It was probably the first time in his life he didn’t get lucky with something. Up until now he’s had more than a charmed life and now it kind of came and bit him in the ass.  
“You are not. If I had to live your life I’d just kill myself because poverty sounds terrible,” Tony says in a matter-of-fact tone.   
“It isn’t… actually yeah it is that bad and money would go a long way in solving my problems. They say money doesn’t buy happiness but money would pay rent, buy food, an ensure that we don’t go into debt every month trying to stay afloat and honestly that’s the same thing as happiness to me.” Money would solve most of the issues that he had. He guessed Tony wasn’t lucky enough to have that though he didn’t have any of the same issues Steve did.   
“Then why were you so resistant to my help?” Tony asks. “If money would help and I have money how come you and your mom tried to get me to take it back?”  
Because, Steve thinks, they didn’t want to be perceived as users or freeloaders like most poor people were. But he doesn’t know how to explain that to Tony given that the guy had no concept of money. He suppose he might as well give it a shot though. “I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about poor people Tony. Ever hear anything nice? It’s all ‘pull yourself up by your boots straps’ and ‘poverty is a motivator to do better’ and ‘welfare users are all freeloaders who want free money, get a job!’ People kind of hate the poor so much that when he get help we have to wonder what the cost is. And also you dropped a stupid amount of money on us, probably more that my mom and I would ever see in our lifetime. That’s kind of a huge deal.”   
On the other end Tony seems to be considering his words so Steve lets him process that. “But poor people need help if they’re anything like you guys,” Tony says eventually.   
True, Steve knows. “I doubt you would have been nearly as receptive to us if we didn’t look so deserving of the help. If, say, my mom was an addict or I was a high school drop out with no health issues and no job. We could class in the undeserving poor, the ones who deserve pity and help. People aren’t nearly so nice to those they think are lazy or bums. You ever met an addict? I’d never condone their actions but they aren’t stupid people, I’ve never met a person that can out resource an addict.” They had some damn interesting ways to survive and support their habits and if it wasn’t for the nasty cost of their habits Steve would be impressed. Actually he was still impressed, he just didn’t condone doing coke.   
“Do people do that? Because I know a lot of coke addicts and Howard is an alcoholic. Hell, I probably have alcohol issues too if I’m honest about it. People don’t treat me like you’re talking about,” Tony says.   
“Because you have the money to fund your habit. People don’t feel cheated out of their money when you do drugs even though you probably personally own the majority of the country’s wealth.” It was amazing to him that people felt cheated out of the pennies the poor took up and not the swaths of wealth that the rich took up. When one percent of the world owned the majority of the world’s wealth he couldn’t believe people blamed the ninety nine percent that were poor. No logic.   
“Well it isn’t like we don’t work for it,” Tony says a little defensively.   
“Of course you do,” Steve agrees, “but if your work wasn’t considered useful than you’d be dirt ass poor too. I mean service workers are the only way your products get sold, and all the people who clean your buildings help contribute to the perception of your brand, but their work is ‘unskilled’ and seen as replaceable.” He’d love to see people who looked down on those jobs actually work them. His mom had some true horror tales. American Horror Story: Retail Work. Bucky lasted three days before he up and quit the job he had at Walmart. In his defense after dealing with the day he had Steve would have quit too.  
“Well not everyone can do what I can do,” Tony says, more defensive this time.  
“Not everyone can draw like I can, sculpt like I can, and create props like I can but my talents are widely regarded as useless. If art was considered important the way tech was and tech was considered as useless as art was then I’d be you and you’d be me. You’re in your position only because people find your talents useful. No matter how much talent I have people will still disregard my work because people throw the arts away. How many people claim the arts have no money in them but love video games and movies? Hypocrites.” And even then people acted like those things were only ever entertainment as if people didn’t get attached to characters and stories, as if people weren’t invested in those things. Plus the artwork in video games was incredible. Animation was totally underrated.   
“I… never thought of it that way but I guess you have a point. I’ve seen your drawings, you’re really good. Everyone else draws eyes all weird and lopsided but you make them look normal and mostly symmetrical. That’s pretty impressive,” Tony says.   
“You have a natural affinity for the arts too and it pisses me off given how you write them off. How many times have accurate, well-drawn diagrams saved your ass when you’re trying to explain something to someone? Trust me I know what a good visual can do for someone’s imagination.” Whenever he was in the drama department it was basically necessary to give them all visuals, to the point where he just showed up with them now. God help him if he ever had to paint another set piece though, he hated painting sets.   
Tony makes a noise of surprise when Steve tells him he’s naturally good at art probably because he didn’t consider what he did art. “That’s also a good point. Howard is shit at drawing and it’s always a downfall for him when he’s presenting stuff to the board because he’s just as bad at words. Guess I never considered that.”  
“You’re good at both. Art and words I mean. I’ve seen you talk your way out of trouble and you’re good at it. Probably because you rely on confusing your opponent and you’re good at losing your opponent in your weird circular logic.” He started using roundabout language that ended up going in so many circles his opponent couldn’t keep up anymore. It was amusing to watch.   
“Nah I’m shit with words, I just got good at a few situations and stuck to the pattern that worked. Not that any of my usual patterns of picking people up have worked on you,” he points out.   
Steve laughs and winces as his ribs shoot pain through his abdomen. That had to be made worse by the damn panic attack. “That’s because you expected me to already be enamored by you, which I’m not. You were screwed up because you jumping off point was gone.” That had been almost amusing to watch too, except Steve was the sorry soul that had to deal with Tony’s weird attempts at coming onto him.  
“Most people aren’t when I go after them though, that’s literally half of my interest in them. People don’t treat me like a normal human often and when they do suddenly it’s like they’re the most desirable person ever,” Tony says.   
Well wasn’t that just sad. “People are good at faking their disinterest, Tony. I genuinely have none. Well not I have some but that’s probably because you’ve done a good job at making it impossible to ignore you and I’m kind of confused with your generosity.” He was still waiting for the catch, for Tony to ask for a favor or something.   
“I’m happy for the interest because I really do like you. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met and that makes you interesting. You shouldn’t be so confused about me being nice though, I just wanted to do something good. That’s not hat complicated,” Tony points out. It was to Steve, not when people were almost exclusively not that generous without strings.


	8. Chapter 8

Clint falls face first into a bed in Cuba, not believing his luck. He’s never had good luck starting with that time his parents died, when he ran off to the circus, getting stuffed into foster care and separated from his brother, and what he was pretty sure was depression. The best thing to happen to him was Phil and he still had no clue why he stuck around given that he had ambitions and stuff. Clint? Not so much. His life’s ambition was to maybe not be dead in five years, he’d see how much he hated his life in the next couple years and decide what to do then.

Then Steve comes up to him and is all ‘lets go to Cuba all expenses paid’ only to find the little shit had to be _talked into it_. Rogers didn’t know how to not look a gift horse in the mouth but Clint did. There weren’t many opportunities in which you knew you’d never get to do something again if you didn’t take the chance and this was one of those things. Phil might be well off but he wasn’t _this_ well off. Stark rented a fucking _mansion_ like it was nothing. Clint probably wouldn’t make the money Stark had in his pocket in a lifetime’s worth of work and to Tony it was pocket change.

“See, Clint looks confortable,” Tony tells Steve. He sounds smug and that’s probably because Steve was terrible at accepting gifts, especially if he knew they cost a lot. Bucky got him expensive paint brushes on year and Steve spent most of that year trying to pay him back. With Tony he knew he was way out of his league as far as paying him back but he didn’t know how to repay Tony some other way. Clint thought it was pretty obvious but sometimes Steve was dense.

Tony Stark was a lonely guy, all he wanted was company but he knew better than to just throw money at people. Most people were as greedy as Clint and would soak him up for it and Stark knew it, so he made friends with a different class of people. People like Steve, people that were genuinely good hearted. That friend of his Rhodes followed the pattern. Clint might love Phil with everything he had but if he was in a school with some nutcase shooting the place up? Fuck that, Clint wouldn’t deck a cop to try and rescue his ass. Clint would mourn him deeply but he wasn’t risking his neck to maybe save Phil. Rhodey didn’t even consider any other option, Clint could tell.

“Clint is… Clint,” Steve says carefully.

Clint flips over and grins at him, “you can say I’m a greedy bastard, it’s true.” He wasn’t about to be offended by the truth, plus he kind of owned it anyways. Stark, interestingly, gives him a look like he doesn’t believe Clint but he really isn’t qualified to give him those looks.

“You’re not greedy, you’re just not… unopposed to some help,” Steve says.

“Greedy,” he and Tony say in sync, snickering at each other when it happens.

“Okay you know what there are four of us, you did not need to rent a mansion Tony. That’s just absurd,” Steve says, hands on his hips.

“I like space,” Tony says, grinning and walking away. Steve totally had no choice but to accept it and this was _so_ worth the trip just to watch Tony throw money at everything only to make Steve deeply uncomfortable.

They all get settled in and Clint enjoys the best shower of his young life in a shower that was better described as a human car wash. Tony finds him some time later and leans against his door jam, “so what’s your deal? Steve never shuts up about a Bucky but he chose to bring you. He has to have a reason.”

Smart. From the last day of travels with Tony Clint knew no one gave him credit for observation, no one gave him credit for it either. “Probably because he feels bad for me,” Clint says. He’s somewhat annoyed with the pity his friends gave him but he also knew he’d feel the same about them if their situations were reversed.

Stark raises an eyebrow, “Steve isn’t the pitying type.”

Also an astute observation. Except, “that’s mostly just an image he puts out. He doesn’t _want_ to be that way but he is. I’ve had a shitty life and he ran into a good opportunity. He chose to share it with me because he thinks I need something good in my life.” It was sweet maybe, but he didn’t need the ‘oh poor Clint’ behind that. He would have preferred Steve just being nice like he would for Bucky.

“Yeah? Because he’s had a shitty life as far as I’m concerned too. I can’t imagine what he thinks is bad.” Stark looks uncomfortable the way people did when they realized they had a lot more than other people. Clint was familiar with the look because he saw it on Phil’s face a lot. He’d never really considered himself lucky to be where he is until he heard Clint’s sad tragic backstory.

He shrugs, “parents died, I ran off to the circus, got busted and thrown into shitty foster care homes. Lost my brother somewhere along the way, haven’t seen him in years. None of the families ever wanted me, they just wanted the paycheque I come with.” He didn’t even tell his foster family that he left the country and they probably didn’t even notice. Fine by him really, neither one of his foster ‘parents’ were pleasant when angry.

“You ran off to the circus? That’s legit?” Tony asks, thankfully focusing on the least shitty bit of that.

Clint grins, “learned archery there too. I can shoot just about anything now.” Once he showed up at the measly archery club his school briefly had and promptly got kicked out for showing an apple right out of the mouth of some grade nine. Poor chick was bloody terrified because she’d been holding it when he shot it. He knew where her hand was though; she was never in any danger. He did almost get expelled though but thanks to a technicality in the rules that Phil found Clint couldn’t be expelled for something he did while not on the school’s time. They’ve since fixed that obviously.

“That is cool, I am making note of that because I totally want to see you shoot things,” he says and winced pretty hard.

“With arrows,” Clint throws in to attempt to make the poor guy feel better for accidentally walking into his own trauma. “I can also shoot arrows with my toes,” he says, hoping that was a better method of distraction.

It was because Tony brightens again. “Dude. There is no way you are leaving this trip without showing me that because that is _awesome_.” Clint knew that too, it was how he managed to score a date with Phil. His interest had started as a morbid kind of curiosity of what Phil would be like in bed given how uptight he was all the time but he eventually managed to grow a mutual interest and now here they were. And Phil was exactly like Clint imagined in bed- a totally tightwad. Once Clint suggested handcuffs to spice things up and the look on Phil’s face had been funny but his asking Clint why he’d want to wear handcuffs when he wasn’t a criminal was ten times funnier than it had a right to be. He had been _so_ genuinely confused by that that Clint spent a good forty minutes laughing.

“Uh huh. Don’t tell Steve or he’ll lecture you about dangerous things and who needs that?” he says.

Tony nods, “I’ll leave Rhodey out of it too,” he says and just like that he and Tony became friends.

*

It becomes increasingly obvious to Steve that Tony was taking the shooting harder than he was but he put up a good front. Guilt, Steve figured, was the root cause of Tony’s issues. “You know it wasn’t your fault right?” he asks one night when Rhodey and Clint are doing their best to out eat each other. Steve thought for sure Clint would win, he _always_ won, but it turned out Rhodey could also eat an inhuman amount of food.

Tony catches on to what he means right away and sighs. “If I didn’t design that gun-”

“He would have used another. I’m not saying you have no responsibility in what happened- you design weapons to kill and that’s something you should have either not done or decided you could live with before you went and designed more efficient killing machines. But you aren’t personally responsible for what happened with Loki. Don’t take the responsibility for what he’s done away from him, that’s his burden to carry.” Besides, it could be argued that as young as Tony is he didn’t realize the gravity of his actions. Steve would never make the argument given that children knew killing people was wrong and they didn’t have half the mental capacity Tony did even as adults, but it could be argued. That, and he grew up in a household in which the morality of building weapons was probably never discussed. Steve would be more likely to point to that as a reason for Tony’s inability to comprehend what his weapons did until he was staring one down. People didn’t think of what hurt others until the same thing was hurting them personally.

“It’s still partially my fault,” Tony says.

Steve wasn’t going to deny that because it was true. But Tony wasn’t acting like it was only partially his fault; he was acting like the whole thing was his problem when it wasn’t. “If someone stabbed Rhodey would you blame the guy who made the knife or the one who stabbed him?” he asks. Tony knows exactly where this is going and he glares at Steve, not impressed with his logic. “Thought so. The implications of what your father’s company does- what you’ve participated in- are huge. I’m not denying that you have a partial responsibility in how your weapons are used. But until that afternoon I genuinely don’t think you ever thought someone would use your weapons without a reason. That only people with a good cause would ever resort to using them. Am I right?”

Tony doesn’t answer that but he didn’t need to. Steve could see the anger at himself for being so stupid and… well yeah that line of thought was pretty stupid. He wasn’t about to deny that. “How is it that you understand all this stuff?” Tony asks.

“Because I read about it. You think I was born with the critical thinking skills to examine the implications of building weapons? No. I just read a lot of social justice theory,” Steve says.

“Well congrats,” Tony mumbles, “you just spat out college level theory and I barely knew what I was doing was wrong. Some use genius is when it’s obviously failed me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic Tony, you’re genius hasn’t failed you. You just grew up in an environment where you didn’t have to consider the consequences of your actions because it’s likely that your parents don’t care. Can’t fault you for that.” Steve didn’t think it was hard to catch a freaking clue but he doesn’t say that. It wouldn’t do any good here.

“Pretty sure my mom cares. Howard? He’s a selfish piece of shit who only cares about himself so he probably doesn’t feel guilty at all. Did I tell you that he tried to kiss and make up to me? After seventeen years of abuse he thinks I should forgive him because I got shot and he realized his legacy might have died,” Tony snaps, shaking his head in annoyance.

It certainly wasn’t the first time he’s heard Tony make annoyed comments about his father but it is the first time he’s been comfortable enough to ask about it. “What’s with you and your dad? You don’t seem to uh… get along well,” he says. To put it mildly. Tony has outright stated his absolute hatred for the man dozens of times. Steve had no reference for how Howard felt about his son aside from Bucky saying he near lost his mind when his son almost died. That was a pretty standard parent reaction though.

Tony snorts, “that’s putting it nicely. He seems to think being sorry should make up for his years of abuse but I know his apologies are worthless. He’s only ever sorry when after he does something wrong and he never changes. I know this time is no different. That’s… that’s what set that panic attack off the first time. Howard. No surprise there,” Tony says bitterly.

Steve reaches out and threads his fingers through Tony’s. He knew a thing or two about shitty fathers who only ever apologized when they did something wrong. How their apologies never meant anything. It was a brand of knowledge he wished no one had.


	9. Chapter 9

Its irrational to be jealous, he knows, but Bucky can’t help it. Steve starts slowly spending more and more time with Tony and even Clint liked the guy. Clint was supposed to be _his_ depression buddy and now he and Stark had stupid inside jokes about archery and toes or something. He doesn’t mean to, doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, until Natasha points it out.

“I’m not distancing myself from Steve,” he mumbles. He kind of wants to shoo her out of his room given how disgusting it is in there but he knows Natasha is a tough cookie. Even if she was eyeing what used to be a plate with a vague look of disgust on his nightstand. To be fair he didn’t really use that one anymore because the thing that used to be a plate was now growing its own life forms. He swore his room was turning into it’s own eco system when he used to keep it clean before. Steve had allergies and he didn’t want to aggravate them. It had actually been a good motivator to get him to clean given that he never had the energy to clean for any other reason. Except now Steve has abandoned him for his shiny, rich new friend.

“Yes you are, now get out of that… _nest_ and go talk to him.” Natasha is glaring at the mess of blankets around him. There was probably like six of them there all weaved together around him and he was glaring right back at her over the top of his blanket basket. It was _comfortable_.

“No!” Bucky says more of stubbornness more than anything.

“ _Yes_ ,” Natasha tells him through gritted teeth, “or I’ll bring him _here_.”

“Oh fuck you,” he snaps before he can stop himself. That was playing dirty and she damn well knew it. “You can’t bring him here, he’ll die!”

“Good, maybe it’ll motivate you to clean that… _thing_ off your nightstand. Get up Barnes or I’ll go dumpster diving to go pull you out of your damn depression crevice so you can talk to Steve. He misses you.”

Yeah, right. “He has new friends now,” Bucky mumbles.

Natasha rubs her temples, “look, you have issues and I get it but has it maybe occurred to you that Steve has only bonded with Tony because they went through a horrible thing together? This isn’t about you Bucky, this is about him and you’re being a selfish asshole. Now get up and go apologize to your best friend for making his trauma about you!” she snaps. “And also throw that thing out,” she tells him, pointing to his nightstand.

Bucky was fully prepared to ignore that she was right and instead do whatever he wanted but his mom chooses then to open the door. “What is all this yelling- James Buchanan Barnes you clean this room immediately!” she yells at him. “What is that thing on your nightstand!” she yells.

“I’ve been thinking of bringing Steve over so he’ll clean faster,” Natasha tells her, jumping on the opportunity to screw him over.

“Please get him here immediately. He might die in here without a mask though,” she says. “Out of that bed and clean. If I come back from work to find it in this condition you’re giving your room to the cat and you can sleep in _his_ bed,” she tells him. With that she turns and leaves. Natasha looks smug and Bucky flips her off.

*

Steve is curled on the couch with Tony, making a Snap Chat story of weird filters and faces when someone knocks on the door. He looks at Tony, who shrugs, before sighing and picking himself up off the couch to go get the door. His ribs, at least, were healing well and didn’t give him much trouble now at least. “Bucky?” he asks, frowning at his obviously annoyed best friend. Natasha is behind him looking like she won something and Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Natasha is making me- ow!” he yelps, jumping when she jabs him in the ribs with her finger.

“Bucky is mad because you like Tony and he thinks you’ve abandoned him because he’s an idiot,” Natasha says, earning a dirty look from Bucky.

Behind him Tony snorts, making Steve jump because he didn’t know he was so close. Tony puts his hand on the small of Steve’s back to settle him and rolls his eyes at Bucky. “Buddy, he never shuts up about you. I could probably give you an entire life history and this is the first time I’ve ever seen you. I’m serious man. Your favorite color is blue, you have a weird affection for all things Pokémon, you started dating Natasha in December of last year, and once when you and Steve were in grade nine he absolutely _devastated_ a bathroom with his colitis shits and you graciously took the blame even though the girl you liked was _right there_ and could smell the whole thing.”

Steve gives Tony a horrified look because he never told him that. He never would have told _anyone_ that extremely embarrassing story. Bucky looks surprised too because that last bit of information was definitely not something everyone would know. “Who told you that last story? I need to know so I can kill them,” Steve says in a tone that was far too calm for the situation.

“Clint and in his defense it was evidence for Bucky loving you,” Tony says.

“Bucky, we’re going to go kill Clint. You promised me you would help hide the body of any man I murdered,” he says.

“Just dissolve him in lye. It’s slow and painful and there’s no body,” Natasha says.

Bucky gives her the appropriate disturbed look that comment deserved.

*

Bucky, Steve learns, is bad at letting other people take care of him but Tony is the only one he had who understood why Loki’s voice haunted his dreams. It was made worse by how pleasant Loki sounded, how smooth and melodic his voice was. That made the things Steve dreamed about that much more terrifying but Tony knew that because he dreamed them too. Bucky was just used to being the one that took care of Steve and now that he wasn’t he was at a loss.

Tony, in his defense, was just as confused with his new position. He didn’t take care of people because usually someone else needed to take care of him. But he took to Steve well and to be fair Steve took good care of him too. He didn’t know much about mental health issues and Steve has been dealing with them in some way or another for his whole life. Plus he knew all those breathing exercises that were useful for when you suddenly found yourself gasping for air.

He doesn’t expect to bond with Tony but there were just too many things that his friends didn’t understand that Tony did. Like his sudden distaste for fireworks. When he told Tony afterwards he had frowned and asked why the hell he would go near something so loud and, well, gun-like when _toasters_ freaked him out when they popped but he hadn’t thought of it then. He used to love fireworks and none of his friends had even thought of Steve’s reaction to them until it was happening where Tony knew what would happen before it did. It was no one’s fault, but no one had really anticipated Steve’s immediate panic attack himself included.

What he _really_ doesn’t expect though is Peter Parker suddenly being a good friend. He liked photography so he ended up taking the spot Steve left in the class- he just couldn’t bring himself to go back in that room after what happened- and he asked Steve for advice often. He also had no problem keeping up with Tony and Rhodey’s tech talk and Steve mostly ignored them when they did that. Peter was always animated and into it though and it made school a little less terrifying when Peter flailed his arms around so much that he accidentally punched himself in the face. Without fail it always made them laugh even if Peter was always annoyed with himself for being so awkward.

Peter was a sweet kid though, and completely unused to his new hero status so Tony takes him under his wing to teach him how to deal with the attention. Steve mostly ignores it but it’s clear that Steve’s methods wouldn’t work for Peter. Rhodey had also gained some pretty legendary status when people found out he punched a cop to try and save Tony, which quickly turned into rumors of him having taken on the entire police force before SWAT took him down. Tony encouraged the rumors by spreading more outlandish rumors every time someone mentioned it to him and Rhodey rolled his eyes but let Tony have his fun. To be fair it was pretty funny, especially when people actually believed it.

Bucky does eventually learn how to deal with someone else taking care of him though, even if he doesn’t like it at first. He isn’t the only one thrown out of his comfort zone though because Tony’s methods for taking care of people usually involved money and Steve has never been comfortable with that. Bucky’s method of learning how to cope with Tony’s new position as Steve’s quasi caretaker is to make a drinking game out of Steve’s uncomfortable faces. Peter and Rhodey find the game particularly hilarious and Clint illegally acquires some tequila.


End file.
